Central's unbeaten '72 and '10 teams had similarities

Leadership and skill-position players were key for both unbeaten squads.

Marc LaPadula (right), a member of the 1993 state champion Viking football… (ABBY DREY, SPECIAL TO THE…)

December 21, 2010|Keith Groller

You've got to give credit to Central Catholic's 1972 football team.

Those unbeaten Vikings were inducted onto the school's Wall of Fame on Saturday, but had to share their special moment with the 2010 CCHS team that won the PIAA championship less than 24 hours earlier

Not only didn't the '72 team mind sharing the stage — the late Jack Pressmann, Jenn Shellhammer and Marc LaPadula were also inducted — but they embraced the school's newest unbeaten team and joined in with the rest of a large crowd at Rockne Hall in giving the new state champs a standing ovation.

Most of the '72 members returned for the ceremony and everyone was thrilled to see head coach Walt King again.

King, who now lives in Silver Spring, Md., said there were several similarities between the '72 team and the '10 squad.

"We had great skill-position players who were juniors, just like the current team," King said. "But we had a senior offensive line and a senior defense, and they provided the leadership. Many of our juniors — Tom Hrabal, Jeff McGeehin, Dan Kendra, Larry Cash, Bernie Gallagher — rode on the backs of those seniors because when we got into tight spots, they took over."

One more eerie similarity was that in the biggest game of the year — against archrival Bethlehem Catholic — CCHS won by one point because the Golden Hawks missed a point-after kick.

King said that had there been a PIAA playoff system in place, he believes his Vikings would have fared well.

"We would have deserved to be in there and while you can't forecast, we would have more than held our own," King said. "We were the No. 1 ranked Catholic team in Pennsylvania, and No. 6 in the state overall, and that includes all classes."

Just as current CCHS coach Harold Fairclough has been generous in giving his assistants credit, King said he was blessed to have good people on his staff in Jim Morgans, Tom Shive and Dick Butler.

He was proud to see Morgans go on to have tremendous success, both at CCHS and Parkland. And, of course, Morgans coached Fairclough, so there's definite linkage there as well.

And even though that team played 38 years ago, King said that some of the first seeds of the spread offense were planted in 1972.

"I don't want to sound like an egotist because I definitely am not," King said. "But what we ran was a mocked up version of what the spread is today. We didn't have a tight end. We ran trips [three receivers to one side], double-slots. We did a lot of stuff that they've taken to the next level today."

Kendra, the '72 team's star quarterback who went on to play at West Virginia, acknowledged that King was ahead of his time.

"When Walt came in, the game was pretty much about two tight ends and 'let's just pound it at you' and Walt ran three wide receivers and spread things out and we threw the ball a lot," Kendra said. "He came from the college level [Lehigh] and that was a big plus for us at Central."

Kendra, who coached on two state championship staffs led by Bob Stem at Bethlehem Catholic, has worked with CCHS quarterback Brendan Nosovitch over the last two summers.

"The one thing you saw right away was that Brendan took whatever you said and it went right out onto the field," Kendra said. "He's got great physical tools, but he also has it from the neck up. And that's what you need to be a great quarterback. He's great now, but at the next level he'll really be spectacular. There's potential for so much more. He is just scratching the surface of what he can do."

Kendra, like the rest of the '72 team, admired how Nosovitch and all of the Vikings handled themselves.

"The one thing you have here at Central, and you have at most Catholic schools, are kids that are disciplined and coachable," Kendra said. "What you saw all year and on Friday night in Hershey was the product of that discipline. Tell these kids to do something and they'll go out and execute for you. It was a pleasure to watch them."

LEMBO GETS BALL STATE JOB

Almost five years to the day that he left Lehigh for Elon, Pete Lembo was introduced as Ball State's new football coach on Monday.

Lembo, who was 44-14 at Lehigh from 2001-2005 and won two Patriot League titles, did an outstanding job at Elon where he took over a program that had been 14-42 over the previous five seasons and went 35-22 in his five years.

In 2009, Lembo led Elon to the FCS playoffs for the first time in the history of the program and the 9-3 team tied a school record for wins.

Under Lembo, Elon averaged 435.2 yards of total offense this season and averaged more than 400 yards per game for four straight seasons.

"Coach Lembo is an experienced head coach with a strong career record leading winning programs at both Lehigh and Elon," Ball State president Jo Ann Gora said in welcoming Lembo to the Muncie, Ind., school. "He comes from environments that value both athletic performance and academic success. I believe this is a great hire. We look forward to a competitive program with championship ambitions."